A simple mystery puzzle. Mystery puzzles have no stated rules, and their answers are usually a word or short phrase. I suppose I am getting in gear for this year's MIT Mystery Hunt. Some spoilery discussion of this particular kind of mystery puzzle follows.

Masyu problems tend to grow a lot in size as they get more difficult, and I tend to note down trivial lengths of loop; my solving method has come to depend on this, and I am both slower and enjoying Masyus less for this. As a sort of a response, I wanted to create a Masyu one could solve in his head. The puzzle below fits that bill; it's an introductory level puzzle with a pattern that allows intermediate solvers to complete it without taking notes, should they so desire.

A Tohu Wa Vohu is a puzzle where you fill each cell with either one of two symbols. The numbers of each symbol are equal in every row and column. Any three horizontally or vertically adjacent cells must contain both symbols.

A Staircases puzzle, like the one below, is a Latin square where a cell–connecting path indicates identity between connected cells' contents.

The above problem is my first attempt at getting published on Puzzle Picnic, under the moniker Term. Puzzle Picnic is a great idea: a community database of grid–based logic puzzles, which provides applets for both constructing and solving online. In short, it is a great place to present puzzles of standard types and reasonable size. Under the fold, I'll be discussing the experience, both of using the site and of creating the problem.